Needs In Conflict: Fisheries, Birds, and So Much More

A recent study explored the balance between fisheries and seabird populations. What the scientists found was that surprisingly minimal drops in the fishery could be catastrophic for the birds, limiting the ability to reproduce and thrive and raising the risk that populations could plummet. The study highlighted the need for better fisheries management overall to protect seabird populations, but it also brought up an issue that is becoming more pressing in many regions of the world: Balancing the uses of natural resources with conflicting needs, and deciding where humans fit in the larger web of life.

Historically, the prevailing human attitude in the West has been that we are entitled to natural resources; that they are here for our use and we should continue to use them as long as, and in any way, we see fit. Even if this means devastating populations, it’s considered an acceptable price to pay because they’re our resources. Thinking on this subject began to shift for several reasons in the 20th century, but it may have been too late for a number of fragile ecosystems, and species.

Westerners began to realize that using natural resources actually used them up if there were no checks and controls, that we could use something right out of existence. Once no more is available, it’s difficult to come back from that. So people began to wonder if perhaps they should steward resources with more care to make sure they continued to be available, for themselves and future generations. The idea of conservation for human uses began to catch on, and one place Westerners looked was to indigenous traditions which promote a more balanced use of the land and resources, and which are less prone to centering human-centric uses of these resources because there are other issues to consider as well.

Issues like the fact that there are other living organisms on earth which need, and sometimes depend on, those resources. As illustrated with the fishery and seabird problem. If fish harvesting is sustainable for humans, in that it allows fish to reproduce and keep producing to provide a reliable source of fish into the foreseeable future, that doesn’t mean it’s sustainable for other organisms that might be relying on that resource. Seabirds and marine dwellers need their share of fish too, and human overfishing can put pressure on those populations.

This goes beyond a purely aesthetic or ethical desire to avoid wiping out animal populations, and into something much deeper. The interdependency of nature has been amply illustrated in a number of studies and settings, showing that a delicate balance can be disrupted when species vanish. Harming seabird populations also harms other populations, something which can eventually loop back around to humans, though they may be loathe to admit it. Saving enough fish for the birds is not just about doing the birds a favour; there’s also a self-interested element involved, ensuring human survival by maintaining a complex balance of elements.

Tension between human and other uses of natural resources becomes more pressing as the human population grows and puts increasing pressure on the environment. Much of this pressure again comes from the West, where a resource-heavy lifestyle is the norm and is heavily promoted. Even Westerners who make a conscious effort to reduce their usage and promote environmental health can have an uphill battle because of the society that surrounds them, which does not facilitate reductions in resource usage for the common good. The West wants to shunt this burden onto the Global South without doing its share, and this in turn is bound to spark a revolt among people who are tired of the West telling them what to do: how to manage their land; how to farm; how to practice forestry; how to live.

A radical shift in how Westerners view resource usage is critical for environmental sustainability. Even those who don’t care about the environment as an abstract entity need to consider how their resource usage may impact their own lives. The connections are sometimes not evident until they’ve been broken down and erased, at which point it is too late to do anything about it. That species that looked interesting but didn’t seem to have any particular function may, in fact, be absolutely critical, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

As people debate about whether to invest resources into saving the giant panda and other large, flashy endangered species that have been endangered by our actions, less attention is paid to the smaller and possibly more dangerous shifts we have wrought in the environment. The global oceans, for example, are in dire need of attention, with shifts in acidity and temperature growing, and presenting a larger threat each year. This is not just about ruining snorkeling spots and potentially cutting through populations of food fish we want; the oceans are our regulator, our thermostat, that thing that keeps the glue together, and if they collapse, we may end up in a very dire place indeed.

Balancing conflicting needs requires making hard choices, as I’ve discussed before, about how and where resources should be used. Many Westerners feel uncomfortable making these choices, and regard attempts at environmental preservation as frivolous and entirely aesthetic. They think people want to save the trees because the trees look pretty—and they do, trees are cool—but it’s about so much more than that, and if we don’t realise this until it’s too late, there’s going to be very little we can do about it.

20 February, 2012 – 10:09 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in environmental issues | Tagged , , , |

Where Are All the Disabled Creators?

Three years ago, I asked readers: ‘Where are all the people with disabilities?‘ in television and pop culture. It’s something I’ve been exploring, poking at, pondering, and writing about ever since, because it’s a question that still hasn’t been satisfactorily answered. We may make up 20% of the population, but we are very rarely seen on screen or on the page, and when we are, it’s usually for a fleeting moment, not as a lead or central character. Sometimes we’re even retconned out of existence, after having our brief shining moment in the sun, so we can be shelved and replaced with newer, fresher, nondisabled versions of ourselves.

Over several years of watching, and commenting on, Glee, it’s inescapable that the aspects of the show that are handled most well are those which the creators know best. Kurt is one of the more complex, developed, and interesting characters on the show, and it’s no mistake that the actor, and writer, are gay. They can bring their experiences to that role to enrich it and make it more interesting, while the other characters feel more one-dimensional. Even when the actors share the experiences they’re depicting, they’re working within the limits of the scripting, which doesn’t allow them much room to flower.

Highlighting the importance not just of diversity in casting, but also in the writing room. The fact that it’s still acceptable to show actors in cripface is irritating and appalling, but it’s also frustrating that so few people with disabilities are writing, producing, and having creative input. In a situation like this, it’s both hard to depict disability well, and hard to get more depictions of disability, because creators write what they know, and when no one knows, representations get left out.

Pop culture that does include disabled characters often shows a stunning lack of interest in research and development; people seem to think they understand the disabled experience based on what they think about it, and thus that they can use this in a depiction and it will be sufficient. They also seem to believe that there’s no possible way they could go wrong, judging from the way that creators steadfastly ignore criticisms from members of the public who have thoughts they’d like to share, like members of the groups being depicted who think they are not being shown well. Who, in the case of Glee, may in fact argue that the show’s depictions are actively harming their cause, despite what the creators claim.

People with disabilities are always going to be thin on the ground in pop culture if we’re not represented among the creative talent tasked with making the pop culture. And there are significant barriers to getting people with disabilities into the writing room, the producer’s chair, the publisher’s catalog. To enter all of these arenas you need connections, which are often hard to obtain for people with disabilities, and it helps to have access to higher education in some cases, to the backdoor ways of entering the field. People with disabilities tend to be shunted out at the very start, forced to make their own art, and it’s hard to jump the gap to pop culture.

There are fantastic disabled actors, comedians, writers, producers, directors out there. They do produce works of great art, some of which are well-known…but primarily in the disability community. Many of them have trouble breaking into pop culture or mainstream, major creative works because doors are firmly and consistently closed to them. The doors are closed when people show up for auditions and aren’t considered seriously, not even for a minute. The doors are closed when a disabled writer can’t break onto a writing team because it’s an insider’s club and crips aren’t welcome there. The doors are closed when a disabled director is informed it would be too hard to get sponsorship for a ‘specialty project’ because that’s what work made by people with disabilities is, even if it’s an action movie that could be a huge hit at the box office. The doors are closed when a novel with a disabled character is an ‘issue book’ that wouldn’t be of general interest.

As we are excluded from the places where pop culture is made, our representations are few and far between. And our exclusion makes it even harder for us to argue against poor representations of ourselves. We aren’t even trusted as authorities on our own experiences, because few creators seem to think it’s necessary to conduct research with actual disabled people to improve the quality of their depictions. I read an interview with a nondisabled actor playing an autistic character recently in which he informed readers that he’d read a lot of books about autism and talked to some social workers, so he felt well-prepared for the role. Absent, of course, was any direct interaction with autistic people who might shed light on their own experiences.

‘Where are all the people with disabilities?’ applies not just to works of pop culture, but also to the people who are creating them. As long as we are kept out of creative roles, it’s going to be very difficult to shift pop cultural depictions of disability, and the social attitudes that come along with them. The idea that no one seems to think we belong in such roles, and that when we do, it’s ‘special,’ is very difficult to push against. We are defined as our lived experience, rather than being acknowledged as creators in our own right with more experiences to bring to the table to enrich the story, and as long as this persists, disabled creators will be kept firmly away from the places of power.

19 February, 2012 – 10:51 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability, pop culture | Tagged , |

I Hate You, Steven Moffat

At the behest of a friend, I started watching Doctor Who in November. He promised me that if the first season started out rough, I’d settle into it and really enjoy it. As indeed I did; judging from the large number of fans of the show, I probably don’t need to tell you why I love so many aspects of it. I ended up tearing through all the available episodes just in time for the Christmas special.

There’s something about watching a lot of television in very short order that allows for some fascinating processes. Because you’re seeing it in compressed form, rather than stretched out over weeks, some of the flaws become more apparent, as of course do the things that work well. It’s also much easier to follow the various bread crumbs dropped, because you can think back two weeks instead of two years to remember the significance of something. One consequence of watching Doctor Who all at once was that I developed a deep and uncontrollable loathing of Steven Moffat.

Which isn’t terribly surprising; many people don’t like him. I note that these people are primarily women, and usually women involved in feminism or social justice work, who may be trying to reconcile their underlying love of the show with the significant problems under Moffat. Men, in general, seem to be more positive about him. Strikingly, several men I talked to about the show told me that it got ‘really good’ under Moffat, implying that it was worth slogging through boggy bits in earlier seasons to get to Love in the Time of Moffat. Why on earth men of my acquaintance would think I’d be delighted with Who under Moffat is beyond me—I thought they knew better than that.

Moffat doesn’t seem to know how to deal with women, at all. Obviously, the show centres around the male character of the Doctor, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s possible to balance that out with positive depictions of women, if the creators put in the effort. Sadly, the recent revival of the series already sort of set a precedent with the Doctor being accompanied by a series of attractive female companions whom he discards over time. Bad enough that Davies should set up with what happens to Donna, showing that the show’s creative team by and large doesn’t seem to think much of women. Moffat took it to a whole new level of disgustingness.

Under Moffat’s tenure, women seem to be primarily framed as vessels, which is, bluntly, rather gross. We have the whole situation with Amy Pond that unfolds over a series of episodes, where it’s made apparent that she’s being used as an incubator and that this is really her primary function. Amy’s also the character everyone needs to surround and protect because clearly she’s incapable of staying out of trouble on her own. A far cry from the independent Rose and Donna, who were much more proactive, aggressive, interesting characters because they were allowed to have personalities, since no one seemed to fear this would detract from the Doctor.

Amy is instead a pale foil, along with bumbling Rory, and, of course, the vessel. Tropes leaning heavily on cis women as incubators are certainly nothing new in science fiction, but that doesn’t mean we should keep using them. What happens to Amy is profoundly dehumanising, at the same time it’s hard to feel affected by it as a viewer because she’s such a paper-thin character to begin with. Her identity, it turns out, is wrapped up around being a mother, a carrier, an object to hold something else.

This also popped up again in the Christmas special, which brought a side of gender essentialism to the trope with a storyline about how women are ‘strong.’ Not to defy stereotypes, of course, but because cis women have uteruses and can bear children, and a mother is the most strong and developed of all because she’s successfully had children. I’m reminded of people pacing around a horse auction, checking out the broodmares, looking for the ones who’ve been proven successful, to find the right one to take home. You want a nice strong one, you know, one who’s successfully foaled, because otherwise she’d be a poor investment.

Moffat’s terror of women and uncertainty about what to do with them are palpable. He shoves them as far into the stereotype box as possible, framing them as vessels, as one-dimensional mothers, as helpmeets, but not as independent individuals. Even River Song under Moffat’s tenure is diluted; instead of being an interesting and enigmatic figure, she’s a tool created by someone else and redeemed, of course, by the Doctor. It rather leads one to wonder what would happen to all these poor hapless women without the influence of a lovely man like the Doctor in their lives. Surely they would all just wither away with no purpose in life, eh?

Moffat’s tenure doesn’t impress me in the slightest, and it sours my appreciation of the show. Instead of being simply a timey-wimey adventure, it’s got to have all of this unpleasant gender essentialism and stereotypes and cissexism crammed in there, which makes it hard to focus on enjoying the show for what it is. I don’t know how much more I’ll be able to watch, as it’s growing increasingly difficult to continually overlook Moffat’s shortcomings in order to enjoy myself.

And this is why I hate you, Steven Moffat, because just as I discovered something good and fun, you totally ruined it for me. Steven Moffat, you are a ruiner, and you should sit in a corner and feel bad about what you have done.

18 February, 2012 – 10:27 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in pop culture, television | Tagged , |

Universal Design Does Not Mean Ugly Design

One of the most common misconceptions about universal design and accessible design in general is that it is ugly. That the focus is on functionality instead of beauty, and that the necessary modifications to create accessibility inherently ruin the lines of a structure. This is used as an excuse to go lax on development requirements that might otherwise encourage or require architects and developers to include accessibility in design plans, and it’s used to justify the refusal to build accessible structures or modify structures to make them accessible. Because it would ruin the aesthetics, and everyone knows form is more important than function.

I call this a misconception, but really it’s a blatant lie. There’s no reason accessible design can’t be absolutely beautiful, just as there’s no reason inaccessible design can’t be absolutely hideous. The beauty of a piece of architecture lies in the skill of the designer. Someone considering access and inclusion from the ground up who is also skilled with aesthetics is going to produce a beautiful building that is also fully accessible. After all, disabled people like pretty houses too.

Two remarkable examples of beautiful and accessible design come to mind for me when I think about this issue.

The first is a home Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to build in 1949 for a World War Two vet. The Laurent House is a masterpiece both from an accessibility standpoint and from an architectural one. Wright was an incredibly skilled designer and there’s a reason many of his homes are maintained as a museums1. Because they are stunning and amazing and compelling, and being inside one feels not just like being in a home, but like being inside a work of art that has been designed with habitability in mind.

Wright’s design was specifically intended not just to make the home accessible and welcoming to the owner, but to actively facilitate life for a wheelchair user. The fittings and fixtures were optimised for the owner and some of the finest aesthetic details were meant to be appreciated from a seated, not standing, position. This highlights the fact that ‘pretty’ inaccessible design is often also intended to be appreciation from a specific posture: that of a standing bipedal of at least average height. Wright turned assumptions about utility and accessibility on their heads with a design which was constructed well before the Americans with Disabilities Act, illustrating that whatever people may think, accessibility has been a consideration for decades.

Fort Belvoir in Virginia features another example of stunning universal design. Architect Michael Graves worked with the army to develop homes suitable for wounded soldiers with designs intended to facilitate independence as well as aesthetics. The fittings and fine details are all focused on mobility and accessibility, from plenty of space in the drive for a van to lowered counters to make it easier to cook while sitting. Aesthetically, the homes are beautiful, with an open, airy, contemporary look.

Graves’ homes reflect a combination of aesthetic consideration, consultation with accessibility experts, and direct conversations with disabled veterans and wounded active-duty soldiers who talked about their needs in a residence. The resulting facilitated designs are harmonious and quite lovely, illustrating that making a building accessible doesn’t mean having to pay an aesthetic price. That, in fact, the very same measures designed to enhance accessibility can also make a structure more beautiful, particularly for the resident who will be inhabiting that environment and navigating it. It’s also a highly flexible design that welcomes people at all levels of ability status, rather than limiting comfort in the home to only some.

Accessibility doesn’t mean ugliness. It doesn’t mean garish rails and utilitarian trim and squat, ugly buildings that are utterly focused on utility with no thought at all as to what they might look like. And people need to stop repeating these lies, because they make it extremely hard to promote, let alone demand, accessible design. When people hear ‘accessible housing’ or ‘disabled housing,’ they usually think of tragic, hideous structures that they don’t want in their neighbourhoods because they will drag property values down and look sad. They don’t think of beautiful homes that may well add value to their homes, creating a house that is truly a home for the resident, instead of a place assembled with a minimum of consideration in mind.

For homeowners preparing to build homes, there’s a powerful incentive to consider universal design if they can get over the idea that it means making a home ugly. Not just because they might need it someday, but because it can add value. Accessible homes that are also beautiful are multipurpose; they can be sold to any buyer, but particularly to a disabled buyer with an interest in feeling comfortable at home without giving up on aesthetic goals.

With growing numbers of older adults in this country, many of whom experience mobility problems, there’s going to be an ever-larger market for accessible homes that are also beautiful places to live, because no one really wants to reside in a bleak box with no character, no hope, and no interesting features.

Many people with disabilities can’t afford to buy homes, let alone gorgeous works of architecture. Pushing for universal design can change that, though, by making sure that cute, affordable, nice homes are accessible too, because people will start to understand that ‘cute’ and ‘nice’ are not antonyms to ‘accessible.’ This is one of the few cases where people can have their cake and eat it too.

  1. Including this one. ↩
17 February, 2012 – 10:12 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability | Tagged , , , , |

Job ‘Support’ Programmes and Enforced Poverty

In many nations, unemployed people who want to go on government benefits need to agree to do something in exchange. They need to look for work or attend a job support programme or provide some sort of indicator that they aren’t shiftless sluggards bent on exploiting government benefits and living off the fat of the land. The same goes for other benefits like food stamps, disability allowance, medical benefits; while people think of social programmes and welfare as ‘free,’ they are definitely not free for beneficiaries, who need to work to obtain them.

And the way these programmes are structured is often specifically designed to enforce poverty and to create a situation where people are trapped with no way to win. Very strict terms and conditions are established for beneficiaries, who lose benefits access if they don’t abide by them. This holds true even if the terms don’t make sense, even if a social worker agrees they don’t make sense, because the system has no room for logic. It is in fact designed in a highly illogical way which often appears to be deliberately structured to maintain a subordinate status for people on benefits.

They are constantly reminded that they are allowed to survive only through the kindness of the government and the taxpayers, who are doing them a great service they should be thankful for because they’re being helped. And they’re told they must show appreciation for that help by complying perfectly with the rules. If you are naughty, if you do not abide by the rules, you get cut off, because you’re clearly not grateful enough for everything the government has to offer you. Go sit in the corner and feel bad, because clearly you have nothing to contribute to society.

I’m currently watching a friend go through a job support programme which maintains truly byzantine levels of bureaucracy which seem designed to actively harm participants rather than supporting them on job hunts. People are expected to attend ‘classes’ where they learn things related to seeking work, even though many of them already know those things full well. The classes are randomly rescheduled or moved, and the recipients are treated like the ones making the mistake when they show up at the wrong place, at the wrong time, in a state of utter confusion and mystification.

Classes are largely useless, filled with makework exercises designed not to provide people with skills or support, but to enforce obedience. Attendees of the programme are supposed to develop thankfulness and compliance with these exercises, not independence and skills; the goal is a reminder of your place in the world, that if you want benefits, you will be forced to sit in a beige room filling in bubbles for three hours, being told that it’s important for career development. If you declare this is clearly not the case and you would like to do something else, you’ll be told you are not cooperating and shouldn’t get benefits anymore.

The same programmes require people to apply for jobs as part of the process even if they are clearly not qualified and won’t be considered, or if a job won’t actually meet the needs of an applicant. Someone who sits down and determines that a set number of hours at a given wage is necessary to live might not be interested in applying for a low-wage, ten hour a week job that will distract from the search for a more useful one. Yet, they need to apply and show proof that they applied and go through the process.

This is a waste of the time of participants, at the same time it’s a reminder that they must obey to continue accessing benefits. It’s also a waste of time for employers, who rightly grow to distrust applications from people referred by job programmes. Because employers have a hard time telling if someone genuinely wants a job and intends to follow through on the application, or is fulfilling a requirement. This makes employers less interested in calling people in for interviews and reviewing their applications seriously, when there’s no way to tell if a job candidate is a candidate, or a person filling in boxes and crossing Ts in order to fulfill the terms of a benefit programme.

These are not systems that actually help people who need assistance and have a genuine desire to get back to work. These are systems that effectively enforce poverty. When you’re required to apply for jobs you aren’t suited for, you’re effectively being told you should be thankful for any job you can possibly scrounge up. And you’re also told that you should live in poverty rather than pursuing better and more appropriate opportunities. You should get off the dole and make something of yourself.

Poverty, as many people have pointed out, is expensive. Taking a job as a stopgap often results in working that job far longer than expected because it’s so exhausting. You’re constantly having to juggle your finances and budget your time and figure out how to make things work. You lose the time you need to apply for other jobs that might pay better and have more hours, that might allow you to tackle issues like debt or moving to a safer and more pleasant house. You certainly don’t have time to apply for higher education, to get a chance at a degree you can use to get ahead.

You get caught on a poverty treadmill you can’t escape because all your options are closed, and the government claims you ‘benefited’ from the programme you were forced to go through. It adds you to a list of successful statistics because the bottom line isn’t about whether your situation was improved, but whether you got a job, any job at all, so the government could strike you off the rolls.

16 February, 2012 – 10:48 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in economy, politics | Tagged , , , , |

The Placebo Effect Is Valid When It’s Happening To You

The placebo effect is one of the most fascinating and well-studied phenomena in medicine. It’s a critical part of clinical trials, of some medical treatments, of research to learn how and why people respond to medications. When people are given something and told it will make them feel better, it often does. When they’re warned it might cause undesirable side effects, it often does, which can create a difficult balance point for medical professionals. They want patients to know about the risk of side effects and to report them if they arise, but they also don’t want to set their patients up to experience side effects by warning them about them.

I experienced a rather spectacular placebo effect in response to a new medication last year, and it was in no small part because of how the conversation about the drug was framed. When it was prescribed, I was warned it might potentially cause a problem, and that problem manifested within days of taking the first dose, well before the serum levels were high enough to cause that kind of response. I’d taken the drug after being primed to expect symptoms, and I experienced those symptoms.

I duly called the doctor’s office to let them know, as I’d been instructed. I was very apologetic and said I knew it was just the placebo effect, but that it was happening anyway and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. The medication manager went through a checklist with me and we discussed the situation and eventually he sort of shrugged and indicated that since I was self-aware enough to know it was the placebo effect, I was probably going to be all right. I should, he cautioned, call again if anything changed.

I hung up and took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down and over the next few days I sternly reminded myself that I hadn’t been taking the drug long enough to experience any changes, positive or negative. Gradually, the reaction waned, and I stabilized, and I’m still on the medication, because it works very, very well at what it is supposed to do. That’s why it was prescribed in the first place, after all; because someone thought it might be helpful.

The thing at the time was, though, even though I was well aware of what was happening, I was still experiencing the side effect. It wasn’t life threatening, but it was uncomfortable, and knowing that it was a false response based on prior knowledge didn’t really help all that much. Being reassured that yes, I was right and it was a placebo response was helpful in the sense that I now understood the mechanics behind what was going on, but it was still going on. And it didn’t really stop going on until I spent a few days in discomfort and a growing sense of unease.

I don’t think the medication manager did anything particularly wrong here; he was thorough about checking for serious reactions and side effects and conscientiously checked in with me for several days to see how I was doing. He felt it was in my best interest to stay on the medication since I hadn’t taken it long enough to really see if it worked or didn’t work, but indicated that if I felt more uncomfortable or something changed radically, I should stop taking the drug immediately and call him. His advice was sound and perfectly medically indicated.

He discussed the side effect with me in a way that wasn’t dismissive; not an ‘ah, the placebo effect,’ but doublechecking to see if something else was going on or if some sort of peculiar interaction was occurring. He took it seriously as something what was happening to me, and this was, I must confess, somewhat unusual for a health care provider. I’m used to being told I don’t know my own body and when I have experienced placebo reactions in the past1 they’ve been dismissed or treated as unimportant. I’ve been told they’re obviously false reactions and I’ll feel better as soon as I stop fixating on the situation.

To be told ‘yes, this is a real thing that you are experiencing’ was refreshing, and indirectly, I think it contributed to my recovery from it. I suggested that in the future, when starting patients on this medication, he might want to be a little more circumspect about his warning; he was clearly concerned I might experience an actual reaction given my medical history and wanted to be absolutely sure I understood what that reaction would look and feel like. The new effect, though, was that I was reminded multiple times during my appointment, which very much created a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy; my brain went from ‘this could happen so watch out’ to ‘this is definitely going to happen.’

There’s a fine balance to be struck with disclosing side effects and working through them. Patients need access to this information and they especially need to be warned if there’s a particular concern or risk in their case because of medical history or other factors. Health providers shouldn’t gloss over information about potential reactions and should make sure their patients know how to respond if they start feeling peculiar on a new medication. At the same time, though, they have to be careful about setting patients up for bad reactions by basically giving them a checklist.

And when the placebo effect does occur, they need to treat it as a real experience, because the patient is actually experiencing it. Whatever the origins, the net effect is the same; someone is in pain or discomfort.

  1. Evidently I have a very suggestible mind? ↩
15 February, 2012 – 10:29 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in health | Tagged , , |

Mothers In Politics

Politics provide a great example of how insidiously messaging about gender roles persists despite pushback. The belief that women belong in the home is still strong, and it’s especially strong in the case of mothers, who are expected to drop everything and dedicate their lives to their children. Mothers are apparently incapable of balancing work and home lives, of pursuing careers while also caring for and loving their children, and can’t be trusted to make good decisions for their children if they are also working, at least, so society seems to believe. In politics, this is particularly stark.

It is not uncommon for politicians to have families and in fact it is somewhat expected, because politicians want to be able to play the ‘family values’ card. It’s a lot harder to do that if you don’t have a family; at the very least, a loving partner, but ideally, also children. Politicians of all genders commonly have children, yet it’s the children of female politicians who seem to attract the most attention and ire.

It’s taken for granted that of course men would work outside the home even if they have children, and that a political career is important enough for a man to continue pursuing it while also raising children. This is, after all, man’s due; that he should rule the household and the world. Thus, you very rarely see the media questioning whether a man can safely run a campaign and have children. You don’t see magazines probing into the private home life of male politicians to ask if they’re fit fathers, or to question whether they should continue their careers even if they might ‘damage’ their children. Very rarely, for example, do you see a discussion of David Cameron’s son Ivan, who died at age six as a result of disability-related complications. It is considered, as it rightly should be, a personal matter.

For women in politics, though, family lives are open season. The media assumes that it will have access to the homes and families of female politicians and that these should be subject to reporting, blurring the lines between private and professional life. Women are asked about cooking, home decor, and other household matters as though these are appropriate subjects for media profiles when they’re running busy political campaigns. This reiterates the idea that women belong at home, by constantly dragging the homes of women politicians into the public sphere. Instead of keeping the home and work life of these candidates separate, the media does just the opposite, and it is rarely criticised for it. After all, it’s just reporting neutrally, right?

There’s also substantially more debate about whether mothers should be ‘allowed’ to be in politics. It comes in the form of criticism suggesting that mothers who pursue political campaigns are selfish and not thinking in the best interest of their children. In columns asking whether growing up with a mother in politics is damaging or detrimental1. In suggestions that children of mothers in politics must be awfully cold, lonely, and unloved without their mothers around to support and nurture them, as though politics suddenly whisks mothers away and forces them to lose all contact with their children.

Mothers in politics who make a point of making time for their children are criticised. They’re labeled too weak and sensitive for politics, and people claim they can’t focus on the task of politics if they’re always paying attention to their children. The same attention to work/life balance is praised in men, who are labeled sensitive and forward thinking if they take a weekend off from a campaign to go home, or make time every morning to have breakfast with their children, or attempt to keep their children out of the public eye. The persistence of this double standard highlights the common social belief that mothers can’t be mothers and something else, that they must be consumed by a parenting identity.

If there’s one thing I’d like to see a lot less of in the media surrounding this year’s campaign, it’s speculation about mothers on the campaign trail. The media on all sides is guilty of perpetuating outdated, tired ideas about gender roles and the capacity of fully-grown adults to balance private and professional lives. People of any gender carefully consider the decision to enter politics, well aware of the potential impacts on their lives and those of their families. They discuss the situation with family members and decide how they want to proceed on the basis of that information.

And men entering politics know from the start that they will have it much easier in terms of being able to maintain separation between their private and public lives. They are also well aware that they are less likely to be judged, critised, and condemned for deciding to enter politics with children at home. Few male politicians support women candidates against allegations that being mothers makes them somehow unfit, even when those women are from the same party and are not political opponents. This speaks poorly of men in politics, and is yet another reminder of how many people think women shouldn’t be involved on any level in the political sphere, that they should instead sit quietly at home and raise children.

You can raise children and raise a nation if you want to. Unfortunately, if you do want to, you’re going to encounter a lot of people trying to stop you, trying to claim you don’t belong, undermining you at every turn, because they believe you don’t belong and shouldn’t be given a chance. That includes the very people from within your movement you were hoping would be present to support you through your campaign.

  1. Ask Chelsea Clinton how she feels about this. ↩
14 February, 2012 – 10:13 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in gender, politics | Tagged , |

Denial As Virtue

We humans have such a confused, twisted, snarled relationship with food. We can’t seem to decide what to do with it or how to respond to it and we come up with baroque rules to surround ourselves with, not just so we can feel secure around food but so that we can judge others who eat food. When you are judging, you are on the offensive, not providing a small crack for someone to slip through and do some judging of their own, because they are too busy being defensive. Food creates a splendid medium for doing this.

Attitudes around food and eating often position denial as a form of virtue, and this is constantly reinforced. People who are ‘good’ engage in self-denial, while people who are ‘bad’ do not, and they should be punished for it. The persistent belief that weight is as simple as a calories in/calories out equation that can be neatly balanced means that most people assume fatness is punishment for eating too much. For being gluttonous. For not, in other words, suffering in a state of self-denial like all the good thin people, who wear hair shirts and want to be praised for it.

There is a long history in many human cultures of celebrating denial and asceticism while condemning hedonism. It reflects over and over again in social attitudes from people who are living with these cultural legacies. You cannot attend a dinner party without two thousand years of history behind you.

Food, weight, and bodies are not this simple, but even people who know better buy into this mythology and promote it in the way they talk. You see it come up when people hesitate over dessert or accepting a sweet. They say they ‘really shouldn’t.’ They want you to say ‘oh, go on,’ giving them permission to ‘indulge,’ but at the same time, they feel intensely guilty. If they give in to ‘temptation,’ they will talk about how it’s just the once and they will be sure to make up for it on the following day with some extra exercise or a skipped treat or something else. They are at the same time trusting their bodies to make decisions about what to eat, and pledging self-denial in advance to avoid judgment.

Or they are virtuous and good and stand firm and refuse. And they want praise for this, to be told their willpower is commendable and how other people in the room certainly couldn’t do that because it’s just too hard to resist those delicious cupcakes. They want to be told that the self-denial is worth it, really, that they’re not just trapped in a twisted, snarled, tangled relationship where they are constantly fighting their brains and bodies because it’s all for a good cause. They think about how their legs feel in their pants and how much better they will feel after denying just a few more cupcakes, because they are fighting their bodies and they are winning.

Hand in hand with the praise of self-denial comes a larger belief in willpower, the idea that people should be able to control their base urges. Hunger is treated as a base urge, as something dirty that needs to be expelled and controlled. The desire for a treat in particular is something disgusting and unpleasant that really shouldn’t be mentioned, because it goes beyond the simple need for nutrients and into the desire to eat something pleasurable and enjoy the process. People should exercise ‘willpower’ to resist sweets and focus on eating vegetables, even if they love vegetables and eat them regularly and happily in addition to sweets.

The concept of willpower seems to heavily focus on going against the body and being praised for it. In the case of food and eating, many people have been so socially trained that it is hard for them to listen to their bodies; they’ve been told they shouldn’t, they have a complex and conflicted relationship with food, their own internal messaging is off (for a variety of reasons). Willpower, control, are touted as the solutions to these problems, treating the body like an object that needs to be tuned, rather than a living organism made up of complex interconnected systems.

This is not about whether people should love or hate their bodies, or about how people should navigate their own relationships with their bodies. It is about the ways in which society encourages a disconnect from the body, rewards people who ‘control’ their bodies by effectively turning them off and refusing to listen. It is also about a society where certain bodies are considered controlled and others are not, and by extension, people in control are considered virtuous while others are not. Lack of willpower, loss of control, are believed to be negative personality traits which can be read in the body. After all, if someone was in control, the body would be thin and lean and hard and it would conform with a specific beauty ideal. It wouldn’t be soft and fat.

Fatness is considered offensive for a whole slew of reasons, but one of them is the way it’s considered evidence of moral laxity, because people believe that fat is the result of lack of willpower, and they consider this a weakness. Even worse are those fat people who are unapologetic and perfectly happy and refuse to play the dieting and willpower game, who cheerfully listen to their bodies and eat what they want when they want to, because they are breaking the social contract that says we all must suffer to prove how virtuous we all are.

13 February, 2012 – 10:58 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Food | Tagged , |

Human Monstrosities: Vampires and Villainism

The current iteration of vampire mythology has taken on an interesting twist by humanising the vampire. Rather than creating a purely monstrous entity of evil whom the humans in the story are supposed to fear because it is inhuman, creators have done something very different with the vampire. Some aspects of the legend are retained; vampires need blood to survive, for example, but almost everything else has changed. Instead of being a monster, the vampire has become more like a human with a problem, and this radically changes the way characters interact with vampires.

Most works of pop culture with vampires these days have good vampires and bad vampires, and it’s often surprisingly hard to differentiate the vampires from the humans. They have souls, they have the same motivations, they experience guilt and love and other human emotions. In short, they are basically enhanced humans, rather than their own separate entities. These narratives are not about monstrousity in the sense of the other, but rather about monstrous behaviours; because humans are just as likely to do horrible things, in this mythology, as the vampires.

Charlaine Harris’ series, for example, has good and bad vampires along with good and bad humans. The drainers, for instance, exploit vampires for their blood, and members of the Fellowship of the Sun are a particularly vicious incarnation of fundamentalist Christianity. Her vampires are treated more like human beings within the context of the story. They’re powerful, they’re different, but at the same time, they act very human in many ways. Leaving the reader wondering what the difference between vampires and humans is supposed to be, exactly, other than that one drinks blood and can’t go out in the sunlight.

This can be seen not just with vampires, but also with other monsters in mythology. The trend these days seems to be towards humanising them. Giving them human traits and human modes of communication, human motivations and attachment. The same goes for figures ostensibly considered ‘good,’ like angels and fairies; their identities have been twisted and made more complex, while at the same time, they are also made more human. Fairies are no longer purely innocent and sweet, but they’re also much closer to human than they were in previous mythologies.

What, exactly, is accomplished by blurring the lines of speciation between humans and mythical entities? In a sense, it erases their own complexity when storytellers can’t find a way to make them interesting, variable, and different without making them more like humans. The attempts at creating complex social and political structures for mythical entities look like replications of human society, as do the attempts at giving characters some kind of internal conflict. Furthermore, there seems to be a growing attachment to singling out ‘special humans’ who attract attention as love objects who are so compelling, they cross the normal divides between humans and supernatural entities.

These shifts in mythology also mean that the same things explored in literary fiction are being more directly probed in fantasy, even if no one wants to admit it. Fantasy as a genre is often maligned because it contains mythical creatures and unrealistic situations and is considered light, fluffy, and not of this world. Yet, the same things that show up in literary fiction are also appearing in fantasy1; conflict, struggle, and complex situations created by people who come from different backgrounds. It’s just that in fantasy, ‘background’ includes not just race, class, culture, but also supernatural identity.

Fantasy provides a certain amount of freedom of exploration for storytellers which isn’t always possible with literary fiction. Baroque plots are more acceptable and sometimes almost expected, and people sometimes overlook the subtlety behind those plots because they’re occupied with the ridiculousness. It’s easy to deride fantasy when you don’t actually examine it, and some of the most ardent opponents of giving fantasy its due as a genre are those who are least well-read in it; they don’t want to confront their assumptions.

At the same time humanisation erases some complexity, it also introduces a note of interest to these storylines because it takes creatures like vampires out of their traditional role as simplistic monsters. The story is no longer as straightforward as seeing a vampire, deciding it’s evil, and killing it. Suddenly, people in the narrative need to think about whether it is a good or bad vampire, whether it is seeking redemption. The story has become infinitely more complex than basic fantasy or horror where the goal is finding and eradicating monsters because there is no easy way to tell who is a monster.

Unfortunately, many creators seem to use humanisation primarily to create romances between vampires and humans, or other supernatural creatures and humans, as though this is the only way to make them interesting, or the only way to show that they’ve truly reformed. There are, of course, many other ways to illustrate the complexity of supernatural life, to create a world where supernaturals live out their lives in varied ways just like human beings do; falling back on romance feels like the cheap and easy way out and it is unfortunate to see so many creators falling into this trap of assuming a story will only grip readers if it’s got romance in it.

Some bemoan the loss of monster as villain, arguing that something has been lost when horror and fantasy no longer have simply evil creatures. I wonder, though, if it’s the loss of simplistic villains that’s the problem, or the simplistic humanisation of supernatural entities that’s the real issue. Perhaps if these stories were more complex than yet another iteration of the star-crossed romance, they’d be more interesting for consumers.

  1. And always have been. ↩
12 February, 2012 – 10:39 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in vampires | Tagged , |

Carrots

She’s thinning carrots when I get out to the house, bent awkwardly over the barrel, trying to balance the ungainly weight of the pregnancy against the pull of gravity. She looks much larger than I had imagined she would, far too large for someone who isn’t carrying twins, like she has a fully grown adult human tightly curled up in there. At the sound of my car pulling into the drive, she straightens, slowly, still retaining that sense of grace she always had even if it’s moving in half time.

Her hands are covered in crumbles of rich soil which she dusts off on her pants without thinking about it, leaving dark streaks. The same dirt clings to her toes, which are long and straight and highly mobile, wiggling around in the dirt like they can’t hold still, even for a minute. She always liked to garden barefoot, and I guessed with the pregnancy it was kind of hard to put shoes on, anyway. The nail polish she loved to apply to her toes was chipped and worn, like she hadn’t had time or inclination to do it in a while.

‘Hey,’ she said, as I swung out of the car, juggling my cane.

‘Hey,’ I said back, standing there awkwardly for a moment.

I didn’t know if I was supposed to come to her or she was going to come to me or what the plan was. She was the one who called and said she wanted to see me, not the other way around, and I felt out of my depth here. I hadn’t been out to her new house and I peered around curiously, wondering if she would give me the tour, or if this was all about business. She didn’t have a business expression on but I knew from past experience that this didn’t mean a thing.

‘Why don’t we go into the house,’ she said, finally.

She led the way into the farmhouse and I wanted to laugh inside at the way we both shuffled carefully over the uneven flagstones to avoid falling down. They were slick with moss and the head of my cane slipped once or twice, making my stomach tighten as I struggled for balance and hoped I wouldn’t fall. Not now, not in front of her. She picked her way carefully and intently to the doorway and heaved herself up the flight of steps, breathing slow and deep in that controlled way that told me she’d be panting with the effort if I wasn’t there to watch her.

We ended up at the kitchen table, mostly because it was closest to the doorway and had chairs, and I sank gratefully into mine while she bustled around the kitchen to make tea I didn’t ask for and set out a plate of fruit I wouldn’t touch. I never touched anything she offered. It was a point of pride for me, not to mix business and pleasure. She always put out food anyway, like it was some kind of test, and I wondered, not for the first time, who she really was.

‘The people I represent have a problem,’ she said, finally, once the water had finished boiling and she’d set out cups in front of us. Mine was giving off a strong, medicinal-smelling odor. I moved it away so I could make room for the notebook I pulled out of my pocket, wrinkling my nose at the smell. I wrote in quick shorthand that would have been indecipherable to anyone but me as she explained the nature of the problem, what they needed done.

A call from her meant only one thing, I knew, and I’d pledged to get out of the business, but the pay was good and untraceable, and I couldn’t afford to turn it down, not right now. She pushed a piece of paper across the table with the terms and I nodded. This is how contracts are signed in my world, not with a flourish on paper that anyone can read, but with a nod in a country kitchen hung with copper-bottomed pans and bundles of herbs. An innocent, wholesome kitchen with a wide-eyed pregnant woman looking like goodness personified with her grubby gardening pants and casual flannel shirt.

‘It’s a delicate job,’ she said.

‘They all are.’

‘I told them they could count on you.’

‘They know they can.’

The chairs were a little lower than the ones at home and it took me a moment to hit the angle and momentum I needed to pull myself up, our business concluded. I left the tea and fruit on the table and slowly walked outside, listening to her do the dishes behind me. She wouldn’t follow me out; her work was done and as far as she was concerned I’d dropped off the face of the earth until they got the report my work was done.

I took a deep breath of the air outside and thought for a moment it might be nice to retire to the country when all this was over. Maybe this could be my last job and then I could buy a farmhouse on some acreage, a couple chickens to wander around the yard.

I folded myself carefully back up into the rental car. Always use a rental, my mentor told me, and I did. I glanced at my notebook, the shorthand. One more job, maybe the last job. I was very, very good at what I did, but I was getting oh so very tired of it.

There are only so many ways to assassinate people, after all. Eventually it gets boring.

11 February, 2012 – 10:24 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in fiction |